Kinda wild that France has an almost completely fake (rebuilt after WWII) medieval walled city that's a major tourist attraction

It's pretty cool! Also most of Europe is fake by that definition.

Are 5-7 story buildings with straight walls really supposed to look medieval? Looks more like 17th-19th century, I'd think... (Another example of a mostly rebuilt city is Lübeck, but I agree that many old European centers are substantially real, though often with new mixed in.)

I’ve frequently commented that the overwhelming experience I’ve had with historic European buildings is something like “this was built in 1276 AD, but it burnt down entirely in 1978 and was rebuilt. This one brick is from the original building.”

I've talked to a former colleague who grew up in a building in Paris that needed to have cement injected into the walls because they were built as mud and straw, but the straw gets eaten away after a few centuries, to the point where you can just poke through the walls...

On the other hand, I feel like it east Asia the norm is "here is our historic pagoda dating to 1273. It burnt down to the ground 11 times and was most recently rebuilt in 1983 after last burning down in 1943 because of American bombing."

BTW, the mud and straw buildings in Paris are (according to this colleague) relatively easy to identify because they couldn't build straight walls with that technique; they have to tilt inwards (away from the street) as you go up.